• Regionals
  
• Super Regionals
  
• World Series
  

Baseball betting: If you want to bet on the NCAA the only place to find premier college baseball lines is Bookmaker.eu. Heralded as the leading online sportsbook, Bookmaker.eu offers college baseball bettors with spreads, totals, props and futures every week at the click of a mouse. Although football appears to be taking the nation by storm, baseball remains America’s pastime.

College hoops and pigskin are more popular than baseball, but the sport is still woven into the fabric of our society. There’s nothing like taking a child or friends to the ballpark for a hotdog and baseball game. Not even the hard-hitting excitement of football or the high-flying action of basketball can compare with basking in the sun while soaking in nine innings of baseball.

The first intercollegiate baseball game was held in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on July 1, 1859, between teams from Amherst College and Williams College. The game then wasn’t the same as we know it now but that historic meeting began to mold a sport that’s been an integral sector of the student-athlete landscape for more than 150 years.

Like other sanctioned collegiate sports, baseball is played under the umbrella of the NCAA or NAIA. The NCAA is the more popular of the two as 301 teams compete at the Division I level. The regular season spans from February to May and culminates with the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship tournament.

Much like basketball’s version of March Madness, the top 64 baseball teams in the country compete in the tournament. The first tier of the bracket is called the “Regionals” and is comprised of 16 locations with four teams at each site. Those teams compete in a double-elimination tourney with a single winner moving on to the second round.

The second tier of the tournament is dubbed the “Super Regionals.” This is essentially the “Sweet 16” of the tourney. The Super Regionals are spread out to eight locations and the two teams compete in a best-of-three series to advance another winner.

The final eight teams in the tournament advance to the College World Series. Here, two four-team brackets are formed and those squads square off in a double-elimination round. The two winners of those brackets advance to a best-of-three series and compete for the NCAA Division I national title.

Omaha, Nebraska has been called home of the College World Series since for 60 years. Iconic Rosenblatt Stadium hosted the tournament from 1950 until 2010. But the venue will change in 2011 with the newly constructed TD Ameritrade Park Omaha hosting the event. The city of Omaha recently signed an extension that will keep the College World Series there through 2035.

Unlike some of the other NCAA sports, there is plenty of parity in baseball. Fresno State won the national title in 2008 in one of the greatest Cinderella stories in sports history. The Bulldogs squeaked into the tournament by winning the Western Athletic Conference behind a 33-27 regular-season record. They overcame six elimination games to defeat top-ranked Georgia in the finals. It marked the school’s first-ever championship in any sport.

South Carolina won its first College World Series in 2010. USC has the highest winning percentage in Omaha with 21 trips and 12 titles, which is also the record for the most in NCAA history. Florida State has earned a spot in the Series 20 times but never won a championship. The University of Texas has the most appearances at the College World Series with 33.

Like any other sport, college baseball is filled with records and recognitions. The Dick Howser Trophy and Golden Spikes Award are given annually to the best players in the game. Major League Baseball phenoms such as Stephen Strasburg, Buster Posey and David Price were recent recipients.

Former big league player Pete Incaviglia holds the NCAA record for home runs in a season. He blasted 48 bombs in 75 games while playing for Oklahoma State in 1985. Another notable name on the all-time home run list is Lance Berkman who hit 41 long balls with Rice in 1997. He actually played in 12 fewer games that season than Incaviglia did during his record-breaking campaign.

There is an unending equipment debate that plagues college baseball. Metal bats were introduced to the sport in 1975 in order to create more offense for the teams. Proponents believed more runs on the scoreboard would attract more fans.

But the opposition argues that metal bats aren’t safe because reaction time is shortened. They also point to the fact that aluminum bats don’t prepare players that want to compete in professional baseball where only wood bats are used.

For the time being, it doesn’t look like the “ding” sound will be removed from the college baseball atmosphere. But the sport’s popularity continues to grow. ESPN has taken broadcast rights of the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship tournament to a new level by televising nearly every game nationally. And when you can watch games on TV, bettors want to bet on them. More and more sportsbooks, such as BookMaker, are offering wagering options for college baseball lines.

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